Text — Luke 24:1-12

The angels at the tomb ask the women, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  In one sense, this is a rhetorical or sarcastic question — a way of saying, “You’re looking in the wrong place.  Jesus isn’t here among the dead in the cemetery.  He’s alive.”

In the peculiar thought of 1^st century Christians, this phrase “among the dead” meant more than just the people in the tombs.  “The dead” meant the world as a whole, the world that was passing away making room for the new world that Jesus would usher in.  The angels are saying, in other words, that Jesus isn’t in this world, at least not in the same way that other things are in the world.

But there’s another meaning to the question, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead?”  Why are you seeking Jesus at all?  What are you really looking for?  What are we looking for — in life?  And what’s going on in us when we ponder or believe in such a bizarre event as Jesus’ resurrection?

I get a lot of spiritual teaching from dogs and cats, as you know by now.  Once we had as many as three dogs at once, but now our house has gone completely feline and we have three cats: Amos, Emma, and Isaiah.

From time to time, they need to go to the vet and this involves a certain ritual.  First, I get the cat carrier out of basement while no one is looking.  Then, I catch the cat.  There’s less wear and tear on everyone’s nervous system if this happens one cat at a time.  I stuff the cat into the carrier, while the cat does everything in its power to stay on the outside of the crate.  I put the crate in the car, attach the seat belt, and drive to the vet, sometimes with a lot of wailing from the back seat.

At the vet’s, I drag the cat out of the crate, while the cat does everything in its power this time to stay inside the crate.  The cat is placed on a cold, steel table , examined, poked, stuck with needles, and subjected to what the cat must experience as random acts of torture.  After these visits, there are sometimes pills to be shoved down the cat’s throat — as many as three times a day. 

Now you may be wondering, “What does this have to do with belief in Jesus’ resurrection?”

I don’t know what cats think.  My guess is that they don’t understand this vet routine.  I try to explain it.  I really do.  I hold Amos in my arms and I tell him, “Amos, I know you don’t like this, but I’m doing it to help you feel better. I’m doing it to help you live.

But I don’t think Amos gets the big picture.  I doubt if he thinks there is a big picture.  Maybe this is why cats sleep so well.

When Amos goes to the vet, he doesn’t like it.  But here’s the main point: He trusts me anyway.  He really does.  He doesn’t understand, but he trusts me. 

Not all cats, or dogs, are equally trusting.  For Isaiah, a trip to the vet is sheer terror. 

We inhabit the same material world that our dogs and cats do.  We see this world from a slightly different perspective.  We see more of the top of the furniture more and they see more of the bottom. 

But we don’t see the big picture either.  There’s a lot we don’t understand.  Many things happen that we don’t like.  Many things terrify us.  But we learn, somehow, to trust anyway.  Trust in a requirement for life.

We don’t all feel exactly the same trust.  Some of us go kicking and screaming like Isaiah.  Some of us are more relaxed, like Amos.  But we’re all nervous, and we all need some way to trust the big picture.   To keep from going mad, we need to believe that the big picture is not a cruel monster out to torture us.

Life often takes us where we don’t want to go.  Sometimes the pain is excruciating.  But we need to believe that the big picture — what we call God — isn’t against us, but for us, in the deepest sense.  This is what’s at stake in your belief in the resurrection. 

We’re all looking for the living among the dead.  This is the right thing to do.  We’re looking for a way to live in a world that sometimes hurts — a world that’s passing away.  We’re looking for a way to trust.  We need to put our trust in something beyond the material world, beyond what seems to go wrong, beyond what threatens us, beyond what breaks our hearts.

We’re looking for what is truly Living among the dead.  But this Living One, this basis for trust, isn’t in the world in the same way that other things are in the world.  It’s in the big picture .  It’s in what we can’t see fully. 

Amos trusts me without knowing the details.  We can trust too, without knowing the details.  We can trust because we can feel love, joy, beauty, compassion, wonder all around us.  We don’t know where all this comes from.  We don’t really understand anything.

When we say, together, in worship, in a prayer or a hymn, “God raised Jesus from the dead,” we’re saying that God is more, God has done more, and God will do more than we can ever understand.  We don’t need to understand, which is good, because we can’t understand.

We do need to trust, to trust not only that there is a big picture, but a big picture that knows us, loves us, helps us live, heals us, forgives us.  Sometimes bitter pills get shoved down our throats, but even then, especially then, we need to trust.

Jesus died on the cross.  There is all human suffering held in one event.  God raised Jesus from the dead. There is all human hope in that one event.  This is the heart of the Christian faith.  We need a collective basis for trust.  And on Easter this is what we are given.  Alleluia.